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Ex-Saipan resident signs with major US publisher
Debut novel to be published in March
Former resident Makiia Lucier will publish her debut novel for young adults on March 4, 2014.
Set in 1918, A Death-Struck Year is the story of 17-year-old Cleo Berry, whose life is turned upside down when Spanish influenza strikes her hometown of Portland, Oregon.
The book will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, whose distinguished author list includes eight Nobel Prize winners, 47 Pulitzer Prize winners, 13 National Book Award winners, and more than 100 Caldecott, Newbery, Printz and Sibert Medal and Honor recipients.
The novel has already garnered early praise and was named a Spring 2014 “Indies Introduce New Voices” selection by the American Booksellers Association, which highlights the best in new talent for the upcoming season.
Makiia Lucier (nee Johnson) was born on the island of Saipan and raised in Guam. She is the daughter of the late Margarita Seman Johnson and the late Lawrence Johnson, a popular teacher at Untalan Middle School. Lucier attended Dededo Middle School and Simon Sanchez High School, graduating in 1993. She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and a master’s in library studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she studied literature for children.
She currently lives in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, with her husband and daughter. (PR)
